Woodland Trust

Updated on Oct 09, 2024

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Formation 1972 Region served UK		Purpose Woodland in the UK
Legal status Non-profit company and registered charity Location Kempton Way, Grantham, Lincolnshire, England, NG31 6LL Membership Woodland enthusiasts and conservationists

The Woodland Trust is the largest woodland conservation charity in the United Kingdom concerned with the creation, protection, and restoration of native woodland heritage. It has over 500,000 supporters and has planted over 30 million trees since 1972.

The Woodland Trust has three key aims: i) to protect ancient woodland which is rare, unique and irreplaceable, ii) the restoration of damaged ancient woodland, iii) plant native trees and woods with the aim of creating resilient landscapes for people and wildlife.

The Woodland Trust maintains ownership of over 1,000 sites covering over 22,500 hectares. It ensures public access to its woods.

History

The charity was founded in Devon, England in 1972 by retired farmer and agricultural machinery dealer Kenneth Watkins. By 1977 it had twenty two woods in six counties. In 1978 it relocated to Grantham in Lincolnshire and announced an expansion of its activities across the UK. It has supported the National Tree Week scheme, which takes place in late November and is run by The Tree Council.

From 2005 to 2008 it co-operated with the BBC for their Springwatch programme and the BBC's Breathing Places series of events held at woods. It continues to work with Springwatch and Autumnwatch most recently in 2015 as part of the Big Spring Watch, which encouraged viewers to record the signs of nature ( Phenology) through the Trust's Nature's Calendar project.

Sites

It acquired Balmacaan Wood next to Loch Ness in 1984. It now has over 80 woods in Scotland, covering 21,000 acres (8,500 ha).

In Wales, it acquired the 94 acres (38 ha) Coed Lletywalter in Snowdonia National Park in 1980. It now has over 100 woods in Wales.

It started in Northern Ireland in 1996 when it received a grant from the Millennium Commission to set up over 50 community woods. The scheme was called Woods on Your Doorstep.

Headquarters

Its first employee and Director, John James, came from Lincolnshire and was living in Nottingham at the time. It had a small office on Westgate. John James was Chief Executive from 1992–97, and then Michael Townsend from 1997-2004. Sue Holden from 2004-2014. The current CEO is Beccy Speight.

A new eco-friendly headquarters, adjacent to the former HQ, was completed in 2010 at a cost of GB£5.1million. The new headquarters have been designed by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios as Architect and Atelier One as Structural Engineer, and incorporates light shelves to distribute natural daylight around the 200 workstations, and concrete panels to absorb daytime heat, to provide the thermal mass that the lightweight wooden structure would otherwise lack. It is estimated that compared to a concrete framed construction, the timber structure saved the equivalent in carbon production as nine years of the building's operation.

Structure

The Woodland Trust's Head Office is located in Grantham in South Kesteven, south Lincolnshire, with regional offices across the UK. It employs around 300 people at its Grantham headquarters. Its current president is Clive Anderson since 2003. In 2016 Barbara Young, Baroness Young of Old Scone became the charity's Chair.

Funding

The Woodland Trust receives funding from a wide range of sources including membership, legacies, donations and appeals, corporate supporters, grants and charitable trusts including lottery funding, other organisations and landfill tax.

Function

The Woodland Trust uses its experience and authority in conservation to influence others who are in a position to improve the future of native woodland. This includes government, other landowners, and like-minded organisations. It also campaigns to protect and save ancient woodland from destructive development. Its projects also include the Nature Detectives youth programme, a project for schools learning about the seasonal effect on woodlands - phenology - and the Ancient Tree Hunt campaign.

Woodland protection

It looks after more than 1,000 woods and groups of woods covering 190 square kilometres (73 sq mi). Nearly 350 of its sites contain ancient woodland of which 70 per cent is semi-natural ancient woodland – land which has been under tree cover since at least 1600. It also manages over 110 Sites of Special Scientific Interest. There are currently over 600 ancient woods under threat across the UK.

Woodland creation

It has also created new woodlands: over 32 km² (12 sq mi) have been created, including 250 new community woods in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Its largest current projects include the 41.7 km² (16.1 sq mi) Glen Finglas Estate in the Trossachs, Scotland and the Heartwood Forest near St Albans, Hertfordshire, England, which will cover approximately 347 ha (860 acres). It owns 20 sites covering 4.3 km² (1.7 sq mi) in the National Forest and has twelve sites in Community Forests in England.

The Woodland Trust also provides free trees to communities or places of education in order to facilitate the creation of new woodland.

Millennium woods

The Woodland Trust's Woods on Your Doorstep project created 250 "Millennium woods" to celebrate the millennium 2000/2001.

Jubilee woods

The Trust ran the Jubilee Woods project, which aimed to plant 6 million trees and create 60 commemorative 'Diamond' woods across the UK as part of Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012. The largest of these, owned and managed by the Trust itself, is the Flagship Diamond Wood in Leicestershire. Situated within the National Forest this will be planted with 300,000 trees.

Ancient Tree Hunt

The Ancient Tree Hunt is a campaign by the Woodland Trust that seeks to catalogue all veteran trees in the United Kingdom. To date over 50,000 trees have been recorded; by 2011 it is projected to have grown to at least 100,000. It is hoped that it will allow a better understanding of the number and spread of ancient trees in the UK. It was started in 2004 by The Tree Register of the British Isles and the Ancient Tree Forum. The trees catalogued by the project are recorded in a database maintained by the Woodland Trust. All entries (both verified and unverified) may be viewed on the campaign's website. All recorded trees may be viewed on an interactive map, or refined listings (of only verified trees) may be generated through a form generated search of the database.

First World War Centenary Woods

This is a project commemorating the First World War which involved tree planting and the establishment of new woodland sites across the UK. The planned sites are Langley Vale Wood (England), Dreghorn Woods (Scotland), Coed Ffos Las (Wales), and Brackfield Wood (Northern Ireland).

For Club and Country

As part of its Centenary Woods project the Woodland Trust entered a partnership with the National Football Museum to create team groves to commemorate all the professional football players involved in the First World War, giving supporters the chance to dedicate trees at the English Centenary Wood, Langley Vale in Epsom.

Nature's Calendar

The project encourages members of the public to record the signs of the seasons near to them in order to show and assess the impact of climate change on the UK's wildlife.

There are thousands of volunteers who send in their sightings, providing crucial evidence about how wildlife is responding to the changing climate. This makes it an example of citizen science.

The Trust's records date back to 1736, making it the longest written biological record of its kind. It has become a powerful tool in assessing the impact of climate change and is highly valued by research scientists.